Lakewood, Cleveland Heights and Solon Among Suburbs Looking to Crack Down on Smoke Shop Oversaturation

The Vapor House in Solon. The city, along with several other suburban councils across Northeast Ohio, are following Cleveland’s guidance and drafting new laws to combat the problem of too many smoke and vape shops. Credit: Google

Earlier this year, Cleveland passed a suite of laws to help curb the oversaturation of smoke shops proliferating around the city and regulate the ones that are currently operating.

Going forward, permits will be required, inspections will need to be passed, and limits exist on where new businesses can open.

Similar laws are now being put on the books or considered in Northeast Ohio suburbs to deal with one of today’s chief retail conundrums — determining how many vape shops any given community wants or needs.

“I think neighboring jurisdictions will be, and are, following our lead,” Cleveland Public Health director David Margolius told Scene in a call Wednesday. “They’re seeing what we’re doing. It’s like a response to the oversaturation of smoke shops in their communities.”

And the laws being mulled over, from Lakewood to Solon and in Cleveland Heights, are pretty much copy and paste. One, place a halt on new shops as soon as possible. And two, draft precise language on where new shops can go.

On June 5, Lakewood City Council passed a ban on new smoke shops to give them time, legislation read, to “review zoning regulations.”

“I counted more than ten in Lakewood along our commercial corridors,” Councilman Kyle Baker told the Sun Post Herald on Monday, referring to a trove of calls from residents complaining about them. But, Baker added, “we’re not expressing some moral judgment on vaping.”

It was the same case three days prior in Solon, when a smoke shop-related memo from City Planning Director Michael Ionna was referred to Solon City Council.

Solon’s three shops—Vapor House, Solon Tobacco & Vape and Smokology—were too close (all in and around the same intersection), produced “excessive lighting and glare,” and raised, Ionna wrote, “significant concerns about exposure and influence on minors.”

To put a halt to “overconcentration,” Solon’s planning commission is set to weigh recommendations that no new shops can open within three miles of another, among other restrictions.

In Cleveland Heights, the procession is clear: three stores—Vitrium, Urban Clouds and Coventry Vape—have popped up in the past year on Coventry, a neighborhood that has struggled in recent years to keep its retail spaces full.

“So many were bubbling up overnight, we had to take a step back and say, ‘What’s going on here?’” Councilman Anthony Mattox told Scene. “Because we don’t have many regulations or restraints, it’s easy for them” to rent storefronts.

“We need to pump the break,” Mattox added. “How many do we want? And where exactly should they be?”

Unlike Lakewood or Solon, Mattox said he wants to try and be fairer to storeowners in the legislative process, as well as quell the concerns of some Heights residents that feel, Mattox said, “Coventry is starting to look a lot like Vegas.” A workshop in July, he said, will do just that.

“And then,” Mattox said, “hopefully we’ll get something passed.”

And passed not just for the sake of preventing oversaturation.

In May, the Green House on West 150th St. and Puritas was raided by police, who were seen removing product from the store, Channel 19 reported. Twenty shops in total, Margolius estimated to Scene, were raided across Northeast Ohio last month.

And last year, a VIP Smoke Shop warehouse in Norwood, Ohio, was raided by the Warren County Drug Task Force, a raid followed by an indictment of the company’s owners for marijuana trafficking, among other charges.

On the state level, a hemp regulation bill, Senate Bill 86, is designed to force all sales of “intoxicating hemp products”—whether it be Delta-8 gummies to CBD softgels—to be only legally sold at adult-use dispensaries. And slapping a 15 percent tax on those products, as well.

“If it were to pass, I suppose many [shops] would go out of business,” Margolius said. “We suspect a lot of them, and I’m being serious, are currently selling straight up marijuana.”